Thursday, November 11, 2010

Simon, a great birder and not-so-good baseball player, makes a deal to play catcher in the big tournament in exchange for his teammates joining his bird-a-thon team, but misplaces his birding zen as he becomes obsessed with winning the bird-a-thon.

REVISED LOGLINE:

Bird-lover Simon wants to win the bird-a-thon competition for his hospitalized mentor but as his last-minute team struggles to tell the difference between chickadees and turkey vultures, he gets an inside tip on a rare bird sighting. Simon must decide whether to publicize the information or use it to his team's advantage as he sorts through what it means to be a winner and how to best honor his mentor.

5 comments:

I read your query on your blog yesterday and think it's great. I think you aren't doing yourself a favor by not including the baseball aspect of the story in the logline. Baseball vs. birding is the story's hook. For that reason I much prefer your first version.

'Simon, a great birder and not-so-good baseball player, makes a deal to play catcher in the big tournament in exchange for his teammates joining his bird-a-thon team.'

I think this part is clear and works well. I'm trying to recall how your query ends because I liked it. Is it something that you can add to the sentence above?

I think your second sentence could include the fun part about the turkey vultures and end with what is as stake (his mentor's respect?)

Sorry I could be of more help, if I have a chance I'll try to find your blog post and see if it brings anything to mind.

Hmmm...I think I like your original.The revision is too long, although I love getting more details because I think this is such a great story. But I don't have any suggestions for you right now because I truly suck at loglines. Truly and absolutely.

When eleven-year-old bird lover Simon Downey makes a deal to catch in a baseball tournament in exchange for his friends joining his bird-a-thon team, he discovers it’s as difficult teaching others to identify birds as it is to maintain a squat in the middle of high-speed pitches and swinging bats.

(It wasn't the end of your query I was thinking of--its was this part. I think this alone is darn close to a good logline, but my brain is feeling a bit logline scrambled right now)

Hi, I like Pat's suggestion for your logline. Perhaps if you use that for a starting point, and then see if you can introduce a little bit about the stakes and keeping his mentor's respect, as Pat suggested in the first comment.

Rachael Harrie

I write YA Horror, Dark Fantasy, and Psychological Thrillers, and spend my day imagining evil plot twists and psychotic characters. When I'm not thinking up ways to make you squirm, you'll find me blogging up a storm (with the occasional Twitter and Facebook foray as well), planning for my next Campaign, wondering whether to make Write Hope a permanent fundraiser for charity, counting down the days to the next WriteOnCon, and diving into another round of critiques with my CPs.

I blog on every second Monday. And other times as the whim takes me :)

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Sixteen-year-old Sydney Price is blinded by the radical group Dark, who demand that she betray her scientist brother if she wants to save his life.

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